The Union Cabinet on Monday gave its nod in amending the existing laws to provide legal backing for seeking of biometric ID Aadhaar with mobile numbers and bank accounts as an optional KYC after the Supreme Court barred mandatory use of 12-digit unique identifier by private firms.

The Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved amendments to the Telegraph Act and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after the Supreme Court in September imposed restrictions on the use of Aadhaar by private companies.

Notably, the two Acts will be amended to provide for voluntary sharing of the Aadhaar number for obtaining new mobile phone connections and for opening of bank accounts.

The changes in the relevant sections of the Telegraph Act and PMLA will be effected through the original Aadhaar Act.

A bill in this regard may be moved in the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament.

Under the amendments, an Aadhaar holder can opt for offline verification through QR code and will not require to share actual Aadhaar number.

Notably, the Supreme Court had struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act that made seeding of the biometric ID with SIMs and bank accounts mandatory, saying it had no legal backing.

Northeast Now is a multi-app based hyper-regional bilingual news portal. Led by a group of professionals, the digital news platform covers every inch of the eight states of northeast India and the five neighbouring countries. It is the first of its kind new media initiative in the northeast, and is based in Guwahati. As the political dynamics in the northeast is intricate and fluid, Northeast Now is always politically neutral.